While it is mostly the Democratic National Committee that has come under attack for accepting foreign donations, the party's defenders argue that Barbour solicited
hundreds of thousands of dollars from Hong Kong
businessman Ambrous Tung Young to subsidize the National
Policy Forum, a GOP think tank founded by Barbour and
subsidized by the RNC.

That money was used as collateral for
a $2.1 million commercial bank loan to the NPF. The same
day it received the loan, the NPF gave $1.6 million of it to the
RNC, which then provided a comparable amount to state
Republican parties and other GOP organizations in 15 states
during the crucial closing weeks of the 1994 election.

At the time, the NPF, which is now defunct, was seeking
tax-exempt status as a nonpartisan policy organization. As a tax-exempt nonprofit, the NPF could have legally accepted foreign contributions. But the Internal Revenue Service eventually rejected the tax
exemption application, ruling that the NPF was "a partisan,
issues-oriented organization."

Barbour dismissed the notion that the NPF was a funnel for the RNC as "goofy."

Barbour served as executive director of the Mississippi
Republican Party from 1973 to 1976, and as a top political adviser
in the Reagan White House in the mid-1980s before becoming RNC
chairman.